amex – Terence Eden’s Blog https://shkspr.mobi/blog Regular nonsense about tech and its effects 🙃 Wed, 30 Aug 2017 06:59:24 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/cropped-avatar-32x32.jpeg amex – Terence Eden’s Blog https://shkspr.mobi/blog 32 32 <![CDATA[Bug with Google Pay and Amex]]> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/08/bug-with-google-pay-and-amex/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/08/bug-with-google-pay-and-amex/#respond Tue, 15 Aug 2017 11:16:14 +0000 https://shkspr.mobi/blog/?p=25503 It is impossible to contact large companies to report a bug in their software. So I'm reduced to writing snarky blog posts about it in the vague hope that a Social Media Manager will see the issue and raise it with the appropriate team. Welcome to 2017!

Google Pay now supports American Express cards in the UK. Hurrah! But if you try to ring Amex from within the app - a problem occurs. Can you spot what it is?

Screenshot of the Android Pay app - the American Express phone number is formatted incorrectly.

The country code should be +44. For some reason, it's missing the +.

The Android phone dialer screen - the telephone number is pre-filled

It passes to the dialler correctly, but the call then fails because the number isn't recognised.

GSM requires an international call prefix when using country codes. If Amex wants customers to be able to call, it needs to change how it presents numbers to Google Pay.

Other providers get around this by using country specific dialling. The Halifax credit card uses an 0345 number which works perfectly.

Screenshot of the Android Pay app - the Halifax credit card is showing the correctly formatted phone number

Unless you're abroad. In which case, it will fail.

I know Google doesn't like testing things before they're released - but insisting that providers use properly formatted international dialling numbers seems like a sensible precaution.

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